The AIR Scale: Development and Validation of a Measure of Motivations for Using AI During Reading

The growing use of generative AI (GenAI) tools for reading has yielded mixed findings on their effects on comprehension, suggesting variation in how and why readers engage with them. To address this gap, we developed and validated the AI-Assisted Reading (AIR) questionnaire, a domain-specific tool assessing motivations for using GenAI while reading. We employed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (N = 425; N = 414), and identified four distinct motivations: Task-oriented, Feel-good, Translation, and Low-effort. The 21-item AIR demonstrated good model fit, reliability, and convergent/divergent validity. Findings offer a practical tool for assessing motivation in GenAI-assisted reading.